Let's Make the Vatican Bank a Bank James S. Henry & Laurence J. Kotlikoff The American Interest (Published: October 2, 2015) http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/02/lets-make-the-vatican-bank-a-bank/ Pope Francis has a bank and wants to help the poor. The poor need low-cost banking services. It's a match made in Heaven. On his recent visit to the United States, Pope Francis received a warm reception at the UN and Congress for his constructive, thoughtful messages on issues like climate change, poverty, inequality, and immigration. Goodness knows His Holiness doesn’t need more work, but we’d like him to adopt one more priority. Fortunately, this one is a natural for the Vatican in more ways than one. Not only does it complement Pope Francis’s social concerns, but it’s something he’s already working on: banking for the poor. About a decade ago, in June 2005, a new President took office at the World Bank: Paul Wolfowitz, fresh from the Bush Administration. We had our doubts about his Iraq adventure, but we were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because we thought he had an opportunity to change the behavior of an institution that is a key player in the global war on poverty. So we wrote... Continue reading

IMF: Emergency Banker to the World, or to W. Europe and FSU? As of 2015, not only is the IMF a leading lender to eight tiny Caribbean havens and Cyprus,[i] with more than $752 million outstanding to them at very low interest rates. In addition, more than two-thirds of the IMF's total loans outstanding went to just three developedcountries in Western Europe and the former Soviet Union: Portugul, Greece and the Ukraine. [i] As of September 2015, the IMF had outstanding credits to the following tax havens: Antigua ($43.4mm), Cyprus ($594mm), Dominica ($5.4mm), Grenada ($21mm), the Seychelles ($30mm), St. Kitts ($ 22mm ), St. Lucia ($9.7 ), St. Vincent ($10.5) and Vanuatu ($17mm). These are priced at real interest rates that are close to zero. See IMF (2015), http://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/balmov2.aspx?type=TOTAL. Continue reading

On the verge of the annual IMF/World Bank meetings in Lima in October 2015 The first time the meetings have been held in a developing country that is not a tax haven! Let's recall who really runs the IMF. Hint: havens and creditors! Those those of you who expect the IMF or the OECD to assist the tax justice reform movement should wake up and smell the Peruvian coffee! (Fast Capitalism is speeding up, creating more excess every day. To keep up, please follow us on Twitter: @submergingmkt) Continue reading

Rethinking Spillovers of Tax Evasion and Trade Discrepancies Case of China, Hong Kong and the Republic of Korea Seung Won Suh (Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment--Supervised by James S. Henry, Esq.) Full report including the analysis of all appendixes & tables can be provided, upon request (contact to ss924@cornell.edu) Lost Tax Revenue in Developing Countries Tax revenue losses due to tax evasion in developing countries are significant in terms of the international components including profit shifting by corporations and offshore holdings of financial assets by private individuals. As capital becomes more mobile, developing countries are dealing with new international challenges, such as taxing multinational enterprises effectively, building effective transfer pricing regimes, establishing and using information sharing agreements to obtain tax information about their taxpayers from other countries, and managing tax incentives to attract international investors (OECD, 2014). Estimates of the level of tax evasion are based on measures of the size of the shadow economy (Fuest and Riedel, 2009). In the context of taxation, the term ‘shadow economy’ can be defined as unreported income from the production of legal goods and services, either from monetary or barter transactions, hence all economic activities that would generally be taxable, were they reported... Continue reading

DARKNET: HFT MARKET MADNESS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE VERY SAME BANKSTERS WHO RIGGED GLOBAL FX MARKETS AND LIBOR!! Fast Capitalism R 1.0 James S. Henry, Esq Download PDF Our Key Findings: 1. The very banksters who rigged the FX and Libor markets now totally dominate the US "Darknet"- alternative securities trading systems that allows for anonymous clearing. 2. For the latest available data, for the week of 8/3/2015, they accounted for 68% of the 3.69 billion (?) shares traded that week on these alternative systems. 3. Surprisingly, the leading bank is Credit Suisse, with 13%, followed by UBS, with 12%. 4. All of these banks have been fined and subjected to lawsuit settlements involving libor rigging, FX rigging, and AML violations. Each and every one of them. Feel free to use this chart as a sequel to Friday. "Even more market madness?" "What are the world's biggest banks doing to gamble with deposit insurance now?" Continue reading

Taxing Money Madness — Why This Is A Perfect Time for a Robin Hood Levy on Financial Transactions http://www.taxjustice.net/2015/08/28/taxing-money-madness-now-is-the-perfect-time-for-fttrobin-hood-tax/ A guest blog for TJN by James S. Henry If ever there was a perfect time to revisit the proposal to adopt a so-called “Robin Hood tax” (AKA the “financial transactions tax,” or the “Tobin tax“) and make it global, this is it. In the last week we’ve just seen a very compelling reminder of why the Yale Prof. James Tobin (1972), a Nobel Laureate, and long before him, J.M. Keynes, a Cambridge don, were outspoken advocates of taxing financial transactions – in the case of Tobin, only currency purchase, but in the case of Keynes, all transactions in financial assets that might be subject to the speculative furies. Their chief goal was financial stability. The idea was to “throw a little sand in the cogs of speculation, ” in order to rein in what they saw as one of modern capitalism’s most self-destructive tendencies. This is its periodic propensity to turn itself into a gigantic speculative casino, generating wild gyrations in asset prices that have nothing to do with their real economic value – and, indeed, may actually help to... Continue reading

For those who are interested in Argentina's recent troubles with the debt vultures, here is Chapter VII from my book The Blood Bankers. (New York: Basic Books, 2005). No important political or economic event can be understood without an historical analysis. This chapter provides the essential historical background that you need to understand where Argentina's current crisis came from, and its "debt problem" is so deep-rooted. Download 07FINALFINALCHAPTERSEVENARGENTINA42112003. Here are a few of my recent TV and newspaper interviews on the subject: (1), (2), and (3). And here is the 2012 US Court of Appeals decision that upheld US Federal District Court Judge Thomas P. Griesa's 2011 rulings in favor of the vulture funds. Download USCOURTS-ca2-12-00916-0.pdf More later! Stay tuned! Continue reading

STELLAR WIND: THE NSA's DOMESTIC SPYING PROGRAM Please watch this video. Then call your US Senators and Congresspeople. Tell them to open their ears. The US Constitution is at stake. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html Continue reading

In short, the white-washing and the kid glove treatment of the Gaddafi regime by leading Western academics may well have discouraged that regime from pursuing deeper political reforms much earlier, and from negotiating in good faith once conflict increased.Fellowtraveler
In other words, it probably cost lives.
If and when the Gaddafi clan is captured and put on trial, either in Libya or before the ICC, we hope that these courts seize the opportunity to examine the conduct and responsibilty of these neoliberal fellow travelers of dictatorship very closely. Continue reading

May 13, 2010 Port au Prince. Today UN spokesperson Edwin Mueller said the UN was opposed to President Rene Preval' decision to seek an extra 3 month emergency term now, delaying the elections scheduled for the end of Nov. 2010. He said the GOH could easily wait til November to determine if emergency conditions existed that required such a delay, and that elections have been held in other countries under much more turbulent conditions. He also said the UN is witholding further aid to the GOH, and will channel it only to NGOs, pending improvement in the GOH's administration of the emergency shelter camps, where at least 1.41 million people -- probably more -- are now living under miserable conditions. Separately, opposition groups have today announced plans for protests next Monday May 17, demanding Preval's resignation. Stay tuned!!! Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T Continue reading